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Monthly Archives: March 2015

Hey everyone, so this week I got the bug that was going around Saint Xavier for the past two weeks. And it was terrible. Honestly terrible. So with this being said, it was a very uneventful filled week with me sleeping between classes. After classes. Before classes. Sleep was a constant event throughout this week. Even with this all of this sleep, I was still almost sleeping throughout my classes. The past two weeks have been so busy that this week had been a week of sleep, and coughing and sneezing.

The one eventful thing about this week was that I found out that I was going to be a RPM (Resident Peer Minister) next year in Regina Hall, which I feel so honored to have been picked. I would also like to congratulate all students on leadership positions while also I hope that we all realize how lucky we were to have been picked because so many students were not picked.

Hello all, I hope that you all are enjoying your weekend and had a great previous week as well. Only around six weeks left in the semester and a break is on the horizon. Classes will be held for only three days this week, as the school will be closed Thursday and Friday for Easter break. Easter break will give us the opportunity to spend some quality time with our loved ones and celebrate Easter. Speaking of quality time and spending it with people, that’s what I choose to do today with community service.

It’s always great to give back to the less fortunate, to the older generation or to the community as a whole. Today at the event, we all went to go see the senior citizens again! We played bingo with them, sat and talked with them about just life. They were happy to see us and for us to spend some time with them as well. Not to mention the gifts that we presented each winner of bingo. It was a great time overall and it makes you humble and wish that you will be able to reach their age and have people that are willing to hangout with and check on us as we get older. I love community service and I cannot wait for the next event.

The more the weeks go by, I cannot help but to get more excited! Graduation is less than two months away and I can’t wait to walk across that stage early Saturday morning. It is going to be an electrifying event and I cannot wait to be a part of the atmosphere that it presents! I am going to celebrate like no other when I walk across the stage. I am going to have my TRUE family and friends there and it is going to be a great time.

With that being said, I hope that everyone has a great week ahead of them and enjoy the rest of their weekend as well!

It’s been a very busy week for me with lots of projects and papers all due within days of each other! I am very much looking forward to having a couple of days off for Easter break.

That being said, despite the lack of warm weather, I’ve been doing some spring cleaning in the little amount of down time that I’ve had. Every spring I get the urge to organize and reduce clutter in every aspect of my life. I’ve found that in order to keep my mind clear and focused, I have to get rid of the things I don’t need every once in while.

One of the organizational projects I have been slowly working on is an email inbox clean-up. If you’re like me, you get anywhere from 5 to 20 emails a day and never take the time to delete messages that are no longer relevant. It makes it really difficult to find the information you need when your inbox is constantly flooded with outdated emails. So, I’ve been taking a few minutes each day to clean up my inbox and select the important messages that I want to keep. It’s been helping me reduce the clutter and remember to respond to messages in a timely manner.

I’ve also started sorting through old clothes and shoes. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I am a big fan of buying used clothes and donating clothes when you no longer want them. However, I find myself hanging on to clothes I never wear because in the back of my mind I am always thinking “But what if I need this someday?” I have been making an effort to think critically about the amount of clothes I have versus the amount of clothes I really need and selecting items to donate. For someone like me that moves back and forth between school and home a lot and is constantly packing bags, less is more.

I made one last major change, a spring haircut! I have had very long hair for many months, but its time for a change. It was a tough decision and parting with my long locks was difficult, but I am glad I did it. I ended up cutting about 9 or 10 inches off!

I hope everyone has a wonderful week! About six more weeks until summer break for us SXU students, we’re in the home stretch!

Saint Xavier University has a student government type of organization that hosts events and fun things around campus. This year Campus Life took us on a cruise at Navy Pier. We got to get on the Odessy. I got a lot of compliments stating that I looked like Kim Kardashian. What do you think?

Kim Kardashian ‘s Twin

I got to dress Michael up and he looked like quite the gentleman by my side. Check it out.

Hope everyone is transitioning back into the swing of things! This past week has been so busy and so much has been going on that I can’t wait for this upcoming week because I am telling myself it will be less busy. . . (This is called living in denial. I know this.) . . Still, it was a great week!

This Friday, I had a lovely time with great people at the Spring Formal; it was so much fun! My beautiful roommate and I got ready together and took pictures with our dates. This dance is now the seventh dance that I have gone to with my boyfriend and it never gets old, it amazes me how much fun it still is, if not more! And the food was amazing as well. One of my favorite parts of dances is seeing everyone all dressed up and fancy! The music was a great mixture and there were two levels for dancing, so if you didn’t like one song, then you could go to the next! And the view while we were on the Odyssey’s observation deck was so beautiful, getting to travel the shore and see the lights of downtown and the north shore was absolutely amazing. By the end of the night, though, my feet were killing me, so I was pretty happy to call it a night and reunite with my bed. . .

The following day I had the opportunity to attend the Presidential Scholarship Ball with student ambassadors, S.T.R.O.N.G. members, and staff in hope of raising money to aid with scholarships. For those of you who do not know, every single student at Saint Xavier University has a scholarship, which if you think about is a big deal! This was such a great experience and I had so much fun being able to take part in it. I got to see so many important faces from President Wiseman to the mayor in Arizona for the town where our new location is to my boss for Cougar Diaries itself, Laura Richardella to Mrs. Spelman who is in charge of the elementary and middle level for education. I also got to meet so many more chair positions in the education department, it was such a great experience! Getting to meet so many of the people who help aid not just me, but all of the Saint Xavier students was an honor. We are all so thankful for them. After the lovely dinner and auction, we were able to get everyone on the dance floor and had a blast!

I hope everyone has a great week and good luck with all of your classes! Hopefully the warmth stays with us and soon summer shall be upon us!

Welcome back! I took a short break from blogging because I was on spring break! This year, I was lucky enough to take my first ever spring break trip. Traveling is rather expensive so I’ve stayed home during my spring every other year.

As you might remember, I turned 21 in October. My mom, sister and brother-in-law were very generous and decided to pay for a trip to Las Vegas over break. I traveled with my two sisters and a couple friends and I am really excited to blog about everything I experienced.

It was my first plane ride in about 8 years so I was pretty nervous. Luckily, the flight from Chicago to Vegas is only about three hours. We left early in the morning from Midway airport and breezed right through check in and security. It was WAY easier than I anticipated. This experience will probably make me more likely to travel again soon.

We were there for four days and tried to pack in as much fun as we could. We stayed at the Mirage hotel and casino on the Vegas strip. We spent our first day eating delicious food from restaurants in our hotel and laying by the pool. That night, we went to see Cirque Du Soliel’s Love, which is an acrobatic show set the music of the Beatles. The show was absolutely astonishing and was perhaps the highlight of my trip. I can’t wait to see Cirque again!

The following day was spent poolside once again and then we enjoyed a wonderful dinner at a popular Mexican restaurant on the strip called Chayo. Afterwards, we walked the rest of strip and I got to witness the Bellagio fountains for the first time. It was incredible!

On our last day we shopped at the Venetian and then toured Madame Toussad’s Wax Museum. The wax statues were eerily life-like, we had a blast taking pictures with our favorite wax celebrities!

I am a somewhat reserved person so I wasn’t expecting to love Las Vegas as much as I did. It is a lively town so if you’re looking for a relaxing getaway, I would consider going somewhere else. But, I do firmly believe that visiting Las Vegas is something everyone needs to do at least once in their lifetime. Viva Las Vegas!

Hello everyone, as always I hope that everyone had a great past week and are enjoying their weekend as well. We’re heading into the lasting weeks of the Spring Semester, which means that it is time to focus more then ever to achieve the grade that we want. With different activities to do on campus and in our personal lives, it is hard at times to juggle both, but we have to find a way to do so. On the bright side, Summer vacation is almost here.

The weather is beginning to improve some and I am beyond thankful for that! When the Winter time rolls around, I normally go in and hibernate like a bear. It is just too cold to go out, especially if you are going to be going from place to place. However, since the weather has now cleared up, we all have been hanging out much more. It’s nice to just hangout and just relax and forget about all the worries and stress that you may have going on in your life with work and school.

Today we’re celebrating my girlfriend’s grandfather’s birthday, he will be 82! We can only wish to make it to that age. I want to ask him what’s his secret, to be honest. It should be a great occasion like it always is. We bought him a cake and it’s a surprise birthday party, so he has no idea that we are coming. It should be a great time, especially just before the work week and classes.

With that being said, I hope that everyone enjoys the rest of their weekend and has a great upcoming week as well!

Hello everyone and I hope that you all enjoyed your much needed vacation from school for a week. It’s too bad that Spring Break is coming to an end, but we only have a couple of months until the semester is over. I enjoyed my break and just being able to relax, however now it’s back to working and going to classes to finish this semester over strong!

This basically sums up what I was doing for most of my break. I got my homework out of the way and I stayed playing the XBox One for my whole break. It doesn’t sound exciting or interesting, but given the fact that I rarely ever play it through the semester, it was much needed. I guess sometimes it’s just the little things that makes us happy. I did enjoy the nice weather that we are having as well. I went out a few places with my friends to hangout and chill, as well as with my girlfriend. Overall, I really enjoyed my break along with getting some terrific news as well!

I know that I have been sounding like a broken record when it came to me speaking on graduation, but I finally know when I am graduating now. I will be walking across the stage in May of this year, along with me taking one class in the Summer for a month to make it official. I am beyond excited! I have a lot of emotions just overflowing right now about me finally graduating from college. This is something that I have worked for, for a long time and it is finally coming to full circle. I am most definitely looking for a major job in my field of Communications and I am meeting up with the Dean of Communications to help with that process. It’s great that people have taken the time out to help me so that I can be set. I am truly thankful!

With that being said, I hope that everyone enjoys the rest of their break and are energized for the last couple of months of the semester to finish off on the right note. Have a great week as well!

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a great spring break! As my previous posts have been about me being excited about my service trip, I finally went on it. We left in the early hours of the morning to meet at the chapel, then to load up the car, and head out on our day of driving. Our car was driving to Mississippi, where we got to stay in Holly Springs at the Scared Heart House. Our group was pretty happy that we got the house to just our group because the Wall’s location, which is the main location, had many other groups. Our first full work day was Monday, where we worked on giving the deck rain protection and fixed the stairs. After we got this done it started to rain, which threw off our plan on working on the roof of the house, because there was another group working on the inside we were unable to do anything more without needing more supplies so we had our first southern meal! The food was all very good and the restaurant we went to had a small hometown field to it. After we finished eating we got to go exploring in the little town of Holly Springs which was a very old fashion southern town. All the meals that we had were made by our group, which for a bunch of college kids, I was pretty impressed with us! One of our group leaders Rob thought we would be eating ramen the whole time, but instead we had full out amazing meals. We all would help out on cooking, cleaning, setting up that it was never a problem! The second day was one of my favorites because we had to prepare to make food for the café, which was pretty much a soup kitchen but the state of Mississippi doesn’t allow soup kitchens, so it’s called a café. This was one of my favorite days because we got to talk to the committee members as we eat, and I found a little family who use to live a block away from me in Minnesota which I thought was pretty cool. How both of their children were born in the hospital that my dad currently works at, just brought everything they said to home. Getting to hear people’s stories about their lives, why they are in this little town, what they do to barely make money, it shows in their stories. For the following week we work at Ms. Diane Jones’ house working on cleaning, organizing, and making her home livable. Our group was only step one of the work on her house so we didn’t get to see the finished project, but just knowing that after day one, she cried from seeing how amazing the house had started to become will always be with me. One thing that I did learn from this experience was, service can be anything. A lot of times people go into it with a lot of expectations but really, you can’t. You can’t go in with the idea that you can fix all the problems, you can’t go in with the idea that you can help thousands. What you can do though, is go in with an open mind and do everything you can as best as you can. Because cleaning someone’s house may not change the world, but its helping one women have a better home.